Faculty Publications

Targeted Issue Messages and Voting Behavior

Document Type

Article

Keywords

abstention, campaigns, elections, persuasion, targeting

Journal/Book/Conference Title

American Politics Research

Volume

48

Issue

2

First Page

317

Last Page

328

Abstract

In today’s data-driven campaigns, presidential targeting strategies rely on detailed perceptions about the political leanings and policy positions of Americans to decide which registered voters to contact and which messages to emphasize in their outreach. However, identifying supporters and opponents of a candidate’s policy positions is far from foolproof. This reality results in some citizens encountering political message(s) on congruent issues, where their issue stance aligns with the messaging candidate, and others encountering incongruent issue message(s), where the candidate and message recipient do not share the same position. Examining official contact records from the 2012 presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney, I find evidence that Romney’s campaign had some success when targeting Democrats with congruent issues. Messaging Democrats with an issue where they and Romney share common ground is associated with decreased support for Obama, increased abstention, and increased support for Romney. Contacting Democrats with an incongruent message and contacting Republicans with either an incongruent or congruent issue message had minimal effects on the voting behavior of the recipient.

Department

Department of Political Science

Original Publication Date

3-1-2020

DOI of published version

10.1177/1532673X19875694

Link to Full Text

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